Pages

Tuesday, July 16, 2013

The Great Zombieland National Disaster

The Great Zombieland

National Disaster

I was carefully and reverentially
pouring another brandy when swinging round the corner came a huge leather satchel,
closely followed by a school uniform containing the skinny figure of Thokozile.
‘Grandpa!’ she said, ‘before you drink too much brandy, I’ve got a question for
the Paramount Chief of Kalakiland!’

‘Fire away,’ I said. ‘Anything except
Quantum Theory.’

‘Why is it that all the land to the
north of us is nothing but empty bush? My friend Rochelle says that nobody
lives there, except a few scary zombies. I asked my Geography teacher, but he
told me not to worry about that because it’s not in the syllabus.’

‘It all happened more than a thousand
years ago,’ I said, ‘when that place was called Zambia. In those days it was a
highly developed country with more than ten million people.’

‘What d’you mean by highly developed?
Did it have spacecraft, intergalactic tourism, time travel and that sort of
thing?’

‘Good gracious no,’ I laughed, ‘it
wasn’t developed in that sort of vulgar futuristic way. But it was developed in
the sense that people enjoyed life, looked after each other, ate well, drank
well, and were peaceful and considerate. People were happy and laughed a lot.’

‘So what went wrong?’

‘Things went wrong after they elected
the new Chief Ukwa to be their new king.’

‘Wasn’t he any good at running the
country?’

‘He wasn’t asked to run the country.
In those days people were very well organized and civilized, and they knew how
to run the country.’

‘So what was the king supposed to do?’

‘In those days the most precious and civilized
thing was laughter. And Chief Ukwa was their most famous comedian. They always
elected ridiculous leaders to make them laugh, and Ukwa was generally reckoned
to be the best yet. He could tell a joke in a very dry and droll fashion. And
while everybody else was falling around laughing, he would just stand there sternly
with a straight face.’

‘Why didn’t he laugh?’

‘He had very bad teeth.’

‘So couldn’t King Ukwa develop the
country by further developing everybody’s sense of humour? What went wrong?’

‘It all went horribly wrong because
Ukwa was not content with being a great comedian. Instead he had dreams of
being a great leader, who would take charge of everything. He declared himself
to be the Great Omnipotent Dictator.’

‘Did people really have to call him
the Great Omnipotent Dictator?’

‘He preferred the shorter version –
GOD.’

‘Didn’t people laugh?’

‘Well, yes, to start with they did.
Until they realized that this was not just another joke, the man was really
deadly serious.’

‘So he didn’t develop the country?’

‘It wasn’t that simple. He had a completely
different idea of development. He said it meant more roads, hospitals and schools.’

‘But didn’t that make the people
happy?’

‘Schools don’t make people happy, they
make people miserable. And before long he was very puzzled to find that he had
no money to pay the teachers.’

‘Why not?’

‘He had spent their salaries on
building more schools. Just as he had also spent the doctors’ salaries on
building more hospitals.

‘And did he still keep building more
roads?’

‘He needed them to bring in the big
machines to build the hospitals and schools.’

‘So he needed to find more money. What
did he do?’

‘He took it from the people. He
removed the subsidy on mealie-meal, so that poor people had to pay more for it.
He removed the subsidy on farm inputs, which made things even worse, since now farmers
couldn’t produce much maize. He increased the tax on petrol, so that people had
to pay more to go to work. People became more hungry and more angry. They
stopped laughing and started shouting Is this what you mean by development?’

‘And how did he answer?’

‘He didn’t answer. He stayed in his
palace. He was too busy with his plans to build more roads, more schools and
more hospitals.’

‘So what happened next? Did the people
protest? Demonstrate? Rebel?’

‘They could not. King Ukwa had been careful
to feed his army well, and the people were now weak and starving. And then the
next thing was, without any medicines in the hospitals, all the old diseases
came back: TB, polio, pneumonia, kwashiorkor, cholera, and typhus. The
hospitals were full of dying patients. The doctors and nurses had all fled
abroad, making good use of the new roads.’

‘So what happened then?’

‘The survivors all fled. All that can
be found now is the crumbling ruins of all those schools, hospitals and roads, overgrown
with creepers, vines and trees. People say that the ghosts of all those that
died still haunt the land. That’s why it’s now called Zombieland, and the king’s
reign is now remembered as the Great Zombieland National Disaster. Nobody has
ever dared to go back.’

‘And those who survived and fled,
where did they go?’

‘They fled over the border and into a
neighbouring country.’

‘Tell me, Grandpa, how do you know all
these things?’

‘Because it was I, Kalaki, who led the
exodus into the hinterland which is now called Kalakiland, where I became
Paramount Chief Kalaki, and where you are the Princess Thokozile.’

‘That means, Grandpa, that you are
more than a thousand years old!’

‘Yes,’ I said, as I refilled my glass.
‘I am well preserved in brandy.’